Charles Onyango-Obbo
30 September 2002
opinion
An independent IMF review seems to agree with critics of the Bretton Woods institution - that liberalisation has not worked famously well, and that structural adjustments do undermine sovereignty of governments.
Of course, liberalisation has not worked well. However, part of the problem is that the IMF, like most donor organisations, are actually quite weak-kneed.
And the sovereignty that the IMF review thinks ought to be preserved is the issue that has confused this whole liberalisation.
It is illogical to believe that a government that cannot manage its economy and, like Uganda, has to depend on over 52 per cent of donor handouts to support its recurrent budget and much higher development expenditure, can manage other aspects of the country well.
Sovereignty is mostly a code word for the politics of a country. This is the way it works: Donors pour money into a poor country to fight poverty, educate and immunise children, and support the budget.
The donors require, for example, that government must stop setting the price of maize and meat, and sell off losing making parastatals.
They put their foot down and no money is given until these things are done.
Then the government holds an election, steals the vote, bans trade unions and parties, and jails its critics.
Some people demand that the donors should not give it money until it cleans up.
The donors say no, they can't stop giving the money, that election theft is a sovereignty issue and they don't dabble in politics.
Obviously, a government that can't hold an honest election, can't make a long-term success of free market policies.
The main reason is that in poor countries today, economic liberalisation succeeds not because the hand of the free market is wiser than politicians and government bureaucrats, but only if it results in the allocation of resources and political power in the hands of people who are interested in making their fellow countrymen and women well off, so that they can in turn make a profit for themselves from having these people buy things from them.
These people don't have to be strictly business people. They can be politicians allied to entrepreneurs, or regular business people.
And as countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan teach us, they don't have to be democrats. They primarily need good business sense.
The failure of liberalisation is that privatisation, to take one key area, was a process by which public enterprises were handed over to hyenas either in business, or politics, who had a short-term view and were greedy.
First, they didn't pay for the enterprises and, after getting them, stripped their assets, built a huge home, and banked the rest of the money abroad. They then moved on to the next one.
This process usually happens because the factions in government, or the opposition party, which has honest politicians is not powerful enough to influence the sale of the enterprises to genuine business with the skill to turn them into profitable companies.
They don't have the clout to fight corruption by ensuring that crooked officials and businessmen who dodge taxes are arrested and prosecuted.
They aren't strong enough to ensure the appointment of judges who aren't crooks, or a police chief who is not in bed with the mafia. No structural adjustment programme alone, however sound it might be, can fight corruption and bring about the rule of law that are necessary for economies to prosper.
If all other civil means to bring good men and women in power fail, the only way to get countries out of the hands of the leaders who hold them hostage, and suck them dry, is to attack the one thing that "development partners" fear most to tackle: sovereignty.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Editor of the Monitor newspaper of Uganda
E-mail: cobbo@monitor.co.ug
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2002 The East African. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
